Chapter III

Mark's hand tightened on the hard object he carried in a lower pocket of his tunic. It seemed to him as if an immeasurably distant vibration reached the very top of his brain where the most difficult thinking is done. It was a fleeting thought, the barest sidereal whisper, that was gone almost the instant it impinged upon his mind. Could the final answer lie there for them?

With Terra gone, or made uninhabitable, they would be homeless children of space, unless they subjected themselves to the prosaic, uninspiring existence of the planetarian settlements, limited by space, rigidly under Council control--their lives but pawns in a gigantic game that was planned for centuries to come with a cold, mathematical impersonality that reduced life to a mechanical phenomenon. Mark shuddered slightly.

"Yes, Palanth, poetic justice indeed! Come to my apartment at International House, I want to tell you a story ... the story of what happened on Europa when I was Mark the daredevil, recorded as Hugh Betancourt--the surname of my Mentor before I earned my rank and the right to use my own name. Jim Brannigan was my second in command, when he crashed our ship on Europa...." He was smiling with a distant look in his eyes.

Later, they met Doctor Fortun.

She was still sheathed in the filmy tunic of silver-violet she had worn at Havanol. The fragrance of Venusian butterfly-orchids was a faint invitation to desire. But her firm, capable hands at the controls, sent the luxurious helio-plane hurtling through the stratosphere at a dizzy speed above a continental cloud bank.

Dawn was beginning in a young flood of opalescent fire; the ship was dipping and the clouds were swirling. Doctor Fortun sat silent with an enigmatic smile on her lips. Mark Lynn didn't speak lest he break the spell, while Palanth leaned back in his mullioned seat, eyes closed, recapturing the past memorable hours.

At last the terrain became visible.

It seemed only seconds and they were hovering above the immense interplanetary field where vast spacers awaited launching. Built to accommodate hundreds of thousands, their titanic proportions dwarfed everything around them. Doctor Fortun touched the controls of her helio-plane, and instantly the ship veered and aimed straight for one of the spacers. She flicked a lever and locked the controls. Calmly, she released another lever, and the robot pilot took over. She leaned back with a sigh, her shoulders slumped, silent still.

Mark Lynn's eyes widened. "What are you doing! We'll crash against that Spacer...." He leaped to the controls but the locking mechanism had been set for arrival and could not be unlocked until the ship came to a stop. At the urgency in his voice, Palanth jerked forward wide awake, in time to glimpse the cavernous proportions of the starboard port of the interplanetary spacer yawning open to receive them.

As it entered the stupendous spacer, the helio-plane decelerated suddenly, coming to an abrupt stop that pressed them back against their ultra-padded seats as if a gigantic hand had pushed them back. Instantly the spacer's port closed automatically without a sound and vari-colored lights flashed within the ship. A bell rang shrilly, insistently somewhere.

"Strap yourselves immediately and push that small lever on the side of your seats, it'll convert them into couches," Doctor Fortun directed hurriedly. "Prepare for launching!" She herself was already busy converting her own seat and then strapping herself. From a pocket of her tunic she took a tiny box and opening it took two pellets which she swallowed; within seconds she was unconscious. Mark reached over and took the box from her nerveless fingers. "Vanadol! For those who do not wish the sleep-freeze, Palanth! Do you want any? Or will you withstand the gravs?"

"Neither, I'll submerge my conscious mind and thus preserve everything that occurs in my subconscious without suffering the effects of acceleration."

"So will I," Mark agreed. His dark green eyes were lambent with fury. "We've been tricked very neatly, old Spacer. We're going somewhere, willy-nilly. The first trick's theirs!" He gazed at the unconscious form of the girl with a mixture of sorrow and anger. "The same old story on a higher plane," he whispered to himself. "A memorable night--and the next day shanghaied into space! I wonder if the ancients staffed their crude water vessels in this manner?"

* * * * *

As they submerged their conscious minds, a buzzer vibrated throughout the interplanetary spacer, a tremor went through the beryllium alloy monster and suddenly it catapulted into space on the astro-warp, robot-controlled until beyond the gravitational pull of Terra. The tiny Helio-Plane, tiny in comparison with the titanic spacer, hung suspended in a special craddle to minimize still further the effects of 2g's acceleration. Doctor Fortun and the two Internationals were too valuable to take chances. But the incongruous three were beyond inductive thinking as the "Stellar-Virgin" leaped away from Earth.

They didn't hear a mechanical voice order: "Free fall into orbit three." Presently the ship settled into the warp. After a while, the same mechanical voice ordering: "Free fall into orbit nine." Presently the Space Drive took hold as the interplanetary cruiser warped out into free space. The normal gravity plates began to function and instantly the pressure ceased.

Color returned to Mark Lynn's face, he was the first to awaken. From where he lay, he could see the still form of Palanth, a fallen dishevelled giant, and the fragile figure of Doctor Fortun, pale as death and as still. A pang of pity shot through him, then remembering, a surge of anger made his eyes grow cold.

Leisurely he unstrapped himself and stretched, then went over and unstrapped his two companions. "Well, we're together, for better or for worse," he sighed. Just then Palanth shuddered and opened his violet eyes; at sight of Mark he sat up abruptly, passing a dazed hand over his eyes. Then he saw the still unconscious form of Doctor Fortun and recollection came to him.

"She's still asleep," Mark said softly. "Let her rest, we'll have ample time for explanations."

Suddenly Palanth laughed. "Shanghaied, by Jupiter's Red Spot!" He searched assiduously for his eternal kerchief. "Ah, here it is ..." then remembering, "My extracts! All my fragrances that have taken years to collect, left on Terra!" He cursed venomously in five interplanetary dialects until he was out of breath.

"Magnificent!" Mark commented admiringly.

* * * * *

Palanth subsided into smoldering fury, his great eyes almost black, the chiselled nostrils quivering. To him it was an appalling loss.

"Go on, don't stop now," Mark urged him grinning. "Later, when she wakes up, you won't be able to mourn your perfumes; now's your chance, besides I'd like some of those remarks for my own collection, Planetarian!"

"You'll find them in your private quarters awaiting you in the Spacer," a wan voice said wearily. "I feel as if I'd been mangled," Doctor Fortun sighed tremulously. Both men turned toward the girl, but her slender body had not stirred, the eyes were closed, only a tiny, tired smile hovered on the curving lips.

"Didn't know you were awake!" Mark reddened at the recollection of the lurid language.

"Praise be to Antares. My extracts ... where are they, where are my quarters ... let's get out of here!" Palanth could think of nothing but his priceless collection. "Without them I'd have to condition myself to pollution!"

"You're not very complimentary, Martian!" Doctor Fortun chided, her hazel eyes flickered open and she sat up. The girl surveyed Mark Lynn with calm, clear eyes. "What, no violence, not even recriminations? What an utterly erroneous conception the Council has about you Internationals," she observed, and waited for Mark to speak.

"We don't indulge in futilities, Doctor Fortun," Mark replied. "But perhaps you can give us an inkling of what all this is about; I think we deserve at least that much, Scientist!"

The girl seemed to meditate in silence. An odd, half fearful, half ashamed expression flitted across her features. "Yes, you deserve a great deal more than I can offer you, Spacer Lynn. But I'm afraid I can only give you another unpleasant experience to chalk up against me. It's all part of a pattern agreed upon even before you and your companion arrived on Terra. It was thought that only your influence on Internationals and Philosophers could persuade them to evacuate--they'd believe you, where they would never trust the Council. It was necessary that you be seen on Terra--when you entered the Council building, it was visi-screened in detail throughout the World State; your encounter with the attacker on the street, was seen by countless millions. It had to be established that you were on Terra, and in touch with the Council, so that your audio-visi-screen broadcast should be considered _authentic_."

* * * * *

"But I didn't broadcast, my orders from the Council were to promise all Internationals, Philosophers and the Ruralians--in fact, all dissenters--a habitable planet to which they would be transported in sleep-freeze, together with all metallic substances, seeds, plasms, drugs, food, in fact everything required for their normal existence for a five-year cycle--free from interference by the Government of the World State--provided they agreed to furnish the World State with an equal amount of materials within one hundred years. I never believed for an instant that the Council would relinquish control, the absolute lack of weapons, or of machinery to fashion them, was in itself a proof of intentions beyond the letter of the offer. I meant to refuse to broadcast to the irreconcilables my personal guarantee as demanded by the Council. Besides, I know of no such planet."

"That was why I took you to Havanol," Doctor Fortun nodded sadly. "The Council anticipated your refusal--your psychological data easily told them that--and since at Havanol only those with special permit could enter, the guests were specially chosen, so that none without the scientific circle knew you were there, thus your broadcast became authentic in the minds of the dissenters. You noticed there were no visi-screens at Havanol, under the excuse that nothing that did not contribute to pleasure could be permitted."

"But I tell you, I didn't broadcast!" Mark was becoming exasperated. "You keep on harping on that!"

"No, but your double did," the girl's voice was opaque. "Turn on the visi-screen in the Spacer, and you'll learn the truth. Everything that has been visi-screened on Terra since your arrival, was recorded in the Spacer's telecast--simply select the broadcasts of the date and hour when we went to Havanol, and it will be shown on the visi-screen panel in the Commander's quarters. Your double--part resemblance, part surgico-synthesis even imitates your voice within one-tenth of a microgram of its tonal quality. Detection was beyond human power, Spacer Lynn."

"If I ever get my hands on him...!" Mark's fingers clenched spasmodically as his face went dark with passion.

"You never will," the girl said sadly, "nor on the double who took the place of Palanth ... even that detail was taken care of, perfumes and all," her smile was bitter. "By now, both have been converted to power reserve, their usefulness having ended." There was an uncomfortable pause, the silence becoming oppressive in the luxurious helio-plane of the girl.

"Who's the Commander of the Interplanetary Spacer?" Mark asked at last, his agile mind already seeking means to circumvent the snare.

"_You!_" was the laconic reply.

"I? Has the Council gone mad? Do they think that after what's happened they can place a spacer in my power, and still command my allegiance? I can lose their damned Patrol in uncharted space ... _and I will!_"

"No, Spacer Lynn, you'll have to find a better, a more definitive solution than that. You see, you promised millions a planet of freedom, where they could build a new civilization patterned after the old American Constitution, but on an even greater, a wider plane of being. You promised them freedom from the Council, and a chance to develop untrammelled not only their minds but their emotions as well; you do not know it, but your double was trained as a great actor, years of conditioning and training taught him to ring the changes of emotion on human souls not deadened by the controls. Reports showed that millions wept, that a tidal wave of joy coursed through their ranks sending them pouring like a human cataract into the awaiting spacers, and sleep-freeze, Mark!"